Prior to the rise of anarchism as an anti-authoritarian political philosophy in the 19th century, both individuals and groups expressed some principles of anarchism in their lives and writings.
Antiquity The longest period of human existence - before recorded history - lacked a separate class of established authority or formal political institutions. Long before anarchism emerged as a distinct perspective, human beings lived for thousands of years in self-governing societies without a special ruling or political class. It was only after the rise of hierarchical societies that anarchist ideas were formulated as a critical response to and rejection of coercive political institutions and hierarchical social relationships.
Ancient China Taoism, a school of thought which developed in ancient China, has been embraced by some anarchists as a source of anarchistic attitudes. The Taoist sages Lao Tzu ( 5th century BCE) and Zhuang Zhou ( to 286 BCE) whose philosophy was rather based on an "anti-polity" stance and rejection of any kind of involvement in political movements or organisations, developed a philosophy of "non-rule" in the Zhuang Zhou and the Tao Te Ching, and many Taoists in response lived an anarchic lifestyle. There is an ongoing debate whether exhorting rulers not to rule belongs to the sphere of anarchism. A new generation of Taoist thinkers with anarchic leanings appeared during the chaotic Wei-Jin period of 220 to 420 CE. Among them were Bao Jingyan, who authored the proto-anarchist treatise Neither Lord Nor Subject.
Taoist principles were akin to philosophical anarchism, trying to delegitimate the state and question its morality. Taoism and neo-Taoism were pacifist schools of thought, in contrast with many of their Western anarchist counterparts some centuries later.
Ancient Greece
Some convictions and ideas deeply held by modern anarchists were first expressed in ancient Greece. The first known political usage of the word anarchy appears in the play Seven Against Thebes by Aeschylus, dated to 467 BC. There, Antigone openly refuses to abide by the rulers' decree to leave her brother Polyneices' body unburied as punishment for his participation in the attack on Thebes. Sophocles used the same theme 50 years later, in his tragedy Antigone, where the heroine challenges the established order of Thebes, coming in direct conflict with the established authority of the town.
Ancient Greece also saw the first Western instance of anarchic philosophical ideals, including those of the Cynics and Stoics. The Cynics Diogenes of Sinope (died 323 BCE) and Crates of Thebes ( 365 – 285 BCE) are both supposed to have advocated anarchistic forms of society, although little remains of their writings. Their most significant contribution was the radical approach of nomos (law) and physis (nature). Contrary to the rest of Greek philosophy (which aimed to blend nomos and physis in harmony), Cynics dismissed nomos (and in consequence: the authorities, hierarchies, establishments and moral code of the polis) while promoting a way of life, based solely on physis. Zeno of Citium ( 334 – 262 BCE), the founder of Stoicism, who was much influenced by the Cynics, described his vision of an egalitarian utopian society around 300 BC. Zeno's Republic advocates an anarchic form of society in which there is no need for state structures. He argued that although the necessary instinct of self-preservation leads humans to egotism, nature has supplied a corrective to it by providing man with another instinct, namely sociability. Like many modern anarchists, he believed that if people follow their instincts, they will have no need of law courts or police, no temples and no public worship and will use no money (free gifts taking the place of the exchanges).
Socrates, as appropriate to anarchism, constantly questioned authority and centred his philosophy upon every man's right to freedom of consciousness. Aristippus, a pupil of Socrates and founder of the Hedonistic school, claimed that he wished neither to rule nor be ruled, and also he saw the state as a danger to personal autonomy. Not all in ancient Greece had anarchic tendencies, though. Other philosophers such as Plato and Aristotle used the term 'anarchy' negatively in association with democracy, which they mistrusted as inherently vulnerable and prone to deteriorate into tyranny.
Middle Ages Medieval Asia
In medieval Persia, Mazdak, a Zoroastrian prophet and heretic now considered a proto-socialist, called for free love, abolition of private property and overthrow of the king. He saw sharing as a religious duty and that no one should have more than others, though sources dispute whether he advocated communal ownership or redistribution. The latter claim being that he gave land, possessions, women and slaves from the rich to the poor. He and his thousands of followers were massacred in 582 CE but his teaching went on to influence Islamic sects of the following centuries.
A theological form on anarchic Islam developed in Basra and Baghdad among Mu'tazilite ascetics and Najdiyya Kharijites. This Islamic tendency was not communist or egalitarian and did not resemble current concepts of anarchism, but preached that the state was harmful, illegitimate, immoral and unnecessary.
Medieval Europe In Europe, Christianity was overshadowing all aspects of life. Brethren of the Free Spirit was the most notable example of heretic belief that had some vaguely anarchic tendencies. They held anticleric sentiments and believed in total freedom. Even though most of their ideas were individualistic, the movement had a social impact, influencing riots and rebellions in Europe for years to come. Other anarchistic religious movements in Europe during the Middle Ages, include the Hussites, Adamites and the early Anabaptists.
Early modern era 20th century historian James Joll describes anarchist history as two opposing sides. One, the zealotic and ascitic religious movements of the Middle Ages which rejected institutions, laws, and the established order. The other, the theories of the 18th century based on rationalism and logic. According to Joll, these two currents later blended to form a contradictory movement that nonetheless resonated to a very broad audience.
Renaissance With the spread of the Renaissance across Europe, anti-authoritarian and secular ideas re-emerged, in response to the growing centralization of power by absolute monarchies. The most prominent thinkers advocating for liberty, mainly French, were employing Utopia in their works, to bypass strict state censorship. In Gargantua and Pantagruel (1532–1552), François Rabelais wrote of the Abby of Thelema (Greek word meaning "will" or "wish"), an imaginary utopia whose motto was "Do as Thou Will". Around the same time, the French law student Etienne de la Boetie wrote his Discourse on Voluntary Servitude in which he argued that tyranny resulted from voluntary submission and could be abolished by the people refusing to obey the authorities above them. Later, still in France, Gabriel de Foigny perceived a Utopia with freedom-loving people without government and no need of religion, as he wrote in The Southern Land, Known. Geneva authorities jailed Foigny for that book. François Fénelon also used Utopia to project his political views, in a book (Telemaque) that infuriated Louis XIV.
In Italy, Niccolò Machiavelli also is said by Paul McLaughlin to have laid some foundations for modern anarchism, particularly in his development of political science. Machiavelli's subversion of political ethics was adopted by classical anarchists such as Mikhail Bakunin, who explicitly declared "Machiavelli was right". However, anarchism was constructed as a political philosophy to fundamentally question the legitimacy of political systems and offer alternatives, itself raising ethical questions of political justice. Bakunin thus elaborated on this departure of anarchism from Machiavellianism:
Early Protestantism Some Reformation currents (like radical reformist movement of Anabaptists) are sometimes accredited as the religious forerunners of modern anarchism. Even though it was a religious revolution and strengthened the state, it also opened the road for the humanistic values of the French Revolution. During the English Civil War, Christian anarchism found one of its most articulate forerunners in Gerrard Winstanley, who was part of the Diggers movement. Winstanley published a pamphlet calling for communal ownership and social and economic organization in small agrarian communities. Drawing on the Bible, he argued that "the blessings of the earth" should "be common to all" and "none Lord over others". The Levellers and John Lilburne were noted to have opposed authority "in all its forms and aspects", which resulted in Lilburne's exile and later imprisonment by the Protectorate of Oliver Cromwell.
In the New World, religious dissenter Roger Williams founded the colony of Providence, Rhode Island after being run out of the theocratic Puritan Massachusetts Bay Colony in 1636. Unlike the Puritans, he scrupulously purchased land from local American Indians for his settlement. Williams' disciple William Harris, was described by the French individualist anarchist Émile Armand as having "thundered against the immorality of all earthly powers, and against the crime of all punishment," leading Armand to ask if he was "a mystical visionary or an isolated anarchist?" The Quaker sect, mostly because of their pantheism, had some anarchic tendencies—values that would later influence Benjamin Tucker. The first to use the term "anarchy" to mean something other than chaos was Louis-Armand, Baron de Lahontan in his Nouveaux voyages dans l'Amérique septentrionale (New Voyages in Northern America, 1703), where he described the indigenous American society which had no state, laws, prisons, priests or private property as being in anarchy. William Blake has also been said to espouse an anarchistic political position.
Age of Enlightenment
The Scientific Revolution had given thinkers of the time the confidence that humans could reason for themselves and when nature was tamed through science, society could be set free. Developing from the earlier thought of the Renaissance, the Age of Enlightenment saw a further eruption of secular and humanistic thought, spurred on by the foundation of rationalism by René Descartes. The prevailing mood of rationalism at the time was summed up by philosopher Denis Diderot, when he declared: "everything must be examined, everything must be shaken up, without exception and without circumspection." Central to the thought of this new generation of philosophers was the idea of man's inherently progressive nature, that people were not bound by sin and could improve in the right circumstances, namely through education. Inspired by the liberalism of John Locke, the French philosopher Voltaire openly opposed absolutism and advocated instead for constitutionalism. Voltaire's anti-authoritarianism was carried further by Denis Diderot, who privately mused on societies without laws or governments, and Jean-Jacques Rousseau, who argued that human nature was fundamentally good and that people had only become corrupted by unjust institutions.